Joy S. Clancy

Reconciling food security and bioenergy: priorities for action

Understanding the complex interactions among food security, bioenergy sustainability, and resource management requires a focus on specific contextual problems and opportunities. The United Nations’ 2030 Sustainable Development Goals place a high priority on food and energy security; bioenergy plays an important role in achieving both goals. Effective food security programs begin by clearly defining the problem and asking, ‘What can be done to assist people at high risk?’ Simplistic global analyses, headlines, and cartoons that blame biofuels for food insecurity may reflect good intentions but mislead the public and policymakers because they obscure the main drivers of local food insecurity and ignore opportunities for bioenergy to contribute to solutions. Applying sustainability guidelines to bioenergy will help achieve near‐ and long‐term goals to eradicate hunger. Priorities for achieving successful synergies between bioenergy and food security include the following: (1) clarifying communications with clear and consistent terms, (2) recognizing that food and bioenergy need not compete for land and, instead, should be integrated to improve resource management, (3) investing in technology, rural extension, and innovations to build capacity and infrastructure, (4) promoting stable prices that incentivize local production, (5) adopting flex crops that can provide food along with other products and services to society, and (6) engaging stakeholders to identify and assess specific opportunities for biofuels to improve food security. Systematic monitoring and analysis to support adaptive management and continual improvement are essential elements to build synergies and help society equitably meet growing demands for both food and energy.

Appendix – Supply chains, techno-economic assessment and market development for second generation biodiesel

This chapter provides a brief review of the environmental and economic assessment of second generation biodiesel supply chains (SGBSC) and the development and coordination of emerging feedstock markets. Common problems faced in SGBSC processes are briefly explained within four categories. An enterprise input–output model is proposed to evaluate total environmental benefits of second generation biomass use instead of first generation biomass in extended supply chains (SC). The bargaining power and willingness to cooperate among extended SC actors are measured by four extreme scenarios in order to understand how an emerging feedstock market is coordinated. Moreover, potential government incentives for chain actors are also proposed and discussed.

Putting the social into commodity chains: what motivates smallholders to opt for inclusion?

The emergence of the concept of sustainable development has put greater emphasis on economic activities that are socially and environmentally responsible. The social dimension of sustainable development reflects increasing interest in integrating poor people into global supply chains. This article begins with the assumption that to fully understand supply chain integration, one must first understand the relations between chain actors. In particular, one needs to understand smallholder motivation for participation in chains. In this article we use the concept of the value chain to examine, based on a case study from a particular agricultural value chain, the smallholder rationales for inclusion in or exclusion from the chain. Understanding these rationales is important for chain sustainability. Granovetter’s notion of “values” provides an explanation for what motivates opting for inclusion in or exclusion from a chain (Granovetter, 1985). We also present evidence about the role of partnerships in contributing to equitable outcomes for smallholders by participation in supply chains, hence aiding chain sustainability.

Incorporating Smallholders’ Values into Value Chains through Partnerships

Inclusion of smallholders in global value chains has been seen as a mechanism to contribute to endogenous economic growth, and simultaneously, to poverty reduction (Helmsing and Vellema 2011). Identifying the actors, their roles and the processes which influence endogenous economic growth has kept academic researchers busy for some time. Their analysis has included the interaction between public and private actors, and the creation of new institutions which enable the organisation of small farmers in high-value export chains (Helmsing 2013).